Only 39% of the submissions to the latest ICLR (machine learning conference) were from .edu emails [1]. There's a lot of research going on outside of academia,

Only 39% of the submissions to the latest ICLR (machine learning conference) were from .edu emails [1]. There's a lot of research going on outside of academia, and there's also a large portion of academia that doesn't use the .edu TLD. That said, I don't have a solution to your problem of fighting spam. [1]: http://webia.lip6.fr/~pajot/dataviz.html http://webia.lip6.fr/~pajot/dataviz.html